Troubleshooting • rPi Zero W has no wifi with a headless setup

Hi All

I am starting out with my first Raspberry Pi, a Pi Zero W with a starter kit.
I have successfully used the supplied NOOBS microSD card to boot the pi and connect to my home wireless.

My problem is that when I try to setup a headless system (I plan to run pihole), the Pi Zero W no longer connects to my wireless.

I used Raspberry Pi Imager (v1.8.5 running on Linux Mint 22.1) to setup a new SD card with Raspberry Pi OS Lite (32-bit) and gave a username and password, my wireless settings, and enabled ssh.
The Pi boots successfully but I cannot see the pi on my network to ssh into it. However, I can login via a keyboard (for testing purposes, I have attached a screen and keyboard to the pi).

If I run the command:I get output:

Linux pihole 6.12.47+rpt-rpi-v6 #1 Raspbian 1:6.12.47-1+rpt1 (2025-09-16) armv61 GNU/Linux

If I run raspi-config and try to set the wireless SSID and password, I get a message:

There was an error running option S1 Wireless LAN

If I run the commands:I get a message:

SIOCSIFFLAGS: Operation not possible due to RF-kill

If I run the command:I get output:

0: hci0: Bluetooth
Soft blocked: yes
Hard blocked: no
1: phy0: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: yes
Hard blocked: no

Can anyone suggest what I can do to connect my Pi Zero W to my wifi, or what I can do to diagnose this issue further?

Cheers
Andrew Mc

Statistics: Posted by AndrewMcNZ — Sat Dec 06, 2025 4:11 am — Replies 1 — Views 57

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